Look to Windward

“Well, he fucking has!” Ziller said, spitting. “The puss-eyed bollock-dragger!”

“I was under the impression he was going to spare you this too,” Kabe said, squatting on the floor near Ziller. “Ziller, I’m most terribly sorry if I misled you in any way, even if it was inadvertently. I am still convinced that Quilan strongly implied he would not be going. I can only assume that something has changed his mind.”

Again, Tersono seemed to be on the brink of saying something, its aura field altering and its casing rising a little in the air, and again it appeared to subside again at the last moment. Its field was grey with frustration.

The avatar turned from the window, arms still folded. “Well, if you don’t need me, Ziller, I’ll be getting back to the Bowl. Can’t have too many ushers and general helpers at something like this. Always some cretin who’s forgotten how to operate an automatic drinks dispenser. Kabe, Tersono? Can I offer you a Displace back?”

“Displace?” Tersono said. “Certainly not! I’ll take a car.”

“Hmm,” the avatar said. “You should still make it. I wouldn’t hang around, though.”

“Well,” Tersono said hesitantly, fields flickering. “Unless Cr Ziller wants me to stay, of course.”

They looked at Ziller, who was still watching the wall of screens. “No,” he said faintly, waving one hand. “Go. Go, by all means.”

“No, I think I ought to stay,” the drone said, floating closer to the Chelgrian.

“And I think you ought to go,” Ziller said sharply.

The drone stopped as though it had hit a wall. It flushed creamily rainbow with surprise and embarrassment, then bowed in the air and said, “Just so. Well, see you there. Ah… Yes. Goodbye.” It thrummed through the air to the doors, whisked them open and closed them quickly but silently behind it.

The avatar looked quizzically at the Homomdan. “Kabe?”

“Instantaneous travel appears to agree with me. I will be happy to accept.” He paused and looked at Ziller. “I too would be perfectly happy to stay here, Ziller. We don’t have to watch the concert. We could—”

Ziller leapt to his feet. “Fuck it!” he said through his teeth. “I’m going! That piece of wriggling vomit isn’t going to keep me from my own fucking symphony. I’ll go. I’ll go and I’ll conduct and I’ll even hang around and schmooze and be schmoozed at afterwards, but if that little turd Tersono or anybody else tries to introduce that selfish litter-fucker Quilan to me, I swear I’ll bite the shit-head’s throat out.”

The avatar suppressed most of a grin. Its eyes twinkled as it looked at Kabe. “Well, that sounds eminently reasonable, don’t you think, Kabe?”

“Absolutely.”

“I’ll get dressed,” Ziller said, bounding towards the internal doors. “Won’t take a moment.”

“We’ll have to Displace to give us enough time!” the avatar yelled.

“Fine!” Ziller called out.

“There’s a one in sixty—”

“Yes, yes, I know! Let’s just risk it, eh?”

Kabe looked at the broadly smiling avatar. He nodded. The avatar held out its arms and gave a little bow. Kabe mimed applause.

~ You guessed wrong.

~ What about?

~ About how Ziller would jump. He’s coming after all.

~ Is he?

Even as he thought the question, Quilan became aware of people around him starting to mutter, and heard the word “Ziller’ mentioned a few times as the news spread. The Bowl was mostly full now, a gigantic buzzing container of sound and light and people and machines. The brightly lit centre, the empty stage where the various instruments glittered, looked still and silent and waiting, like the eye of a storm.

Quilan tried not to think anything very much. He spent some time fiddling with the magnifying field built into his seat, adjusting it so that the stage area seemed to swell in front of him. When he was happy that—like everybody else apart from the real no-magnification purists—he had what appeared to be a ringside seat, he sat back.

~ He is definitely on his way?

~ He’s here; they Displaced.

~ Well, I tried.

~ You’re probably worrying needlessly. I doubt anything will go so far wrong here that anybody’s going to be in any real danger.

Quilan looked at the sky above the Bowl. It was probably dark blue or violet but it looked pitch black beyond the vague haze of the Bowl’s rim lights.

~ There are several hundred thousand lumps of rock and ice heading straight this way. Converging on the sky above this place. I wouldn’t be too sure this is safe.

~ Oh, come on. You know what they’re like. They’ll have back-ups on the back-ups, octuple redundancy; safety to the point of paranoia.

~ We’ll see. Another thing occurred to me.

~ What?

~ Supposing our allies, whoever they might be, have made their own plans for what’s really going to happen when they trigger their surprise.

~ Go on.

~ As I understand it, there’s no limit to what you could squeeze through the wormhole’s mouth. Supposing instead of just enough energy to destroy the Hub, they put through enough to annihilate it, suppose they shoot an equivalent mass of antimatter through the hole? How much does the Hub unit weigh?

~ About a million tonnes.

~ A two-million-tonne matter/antimatter explosion would kill everybody on the Orbital, wouldn’t it?

~ I suppose it would. But why would our allies—like you say, whoever they might be—want to kill everybody?

~ I don’t know. The point is that it would be possible. You and I have no idea what our masters have agreed to, and from what we’ve been told, they too might have been deceived. We are at the mercy of these alien allies.

~ You are worrying too much, Quil.

Quilan watched the orchestra begin to take to the stage. The air filled with applause. It was not the full orchestra, and Ziller would not appear yet because the first piece was not one of his, but even so the reception was tumultuous.

~ Maybe. I suppose it doesn’t matter much, anyway. Not any more.

He saw the Homomdan Kabe Ischloear and the drone E. H. Tersono appearing from the nearest access .way as the lights began to dim. Kabe waved. Quilan waved back.

Tersono! We’re going to blow up the Hub!

The words formed in his mind. He would stand up and shout them.

But he did not.

~ I didn’t intervene. You never meant to really do it.

~ Really?

~ Really.

~ Fascinating. Every philosopher should experience this, don’t you think, Huyler?

~ Easy, son, easy.

Kabe and Tersono joined the Chelgrian. Both noticed he was weeping quietly but thought it polite not to say anything.

The music rang round the auditorium, a vast invisible clapper in the inverted bell of the Bowl. The stadium’s lights had sunk to darkness; the light show in the skies above flickered, flowed and flashed.

Quilan had missed the nacreous clouds. He saw the aurorae, the lasers, the induced layers and levels of clouds, the flashes of the first few meteorites, the strobing lines that hatched the sky as more and more streaked in. The distant skies all around the Bowl, way out over the plains bordering the lake, coruscated with silent horizontal lightning, darting from cloud to cloud in streaks and bars and sheets of blue-white light.